It is customary for Americans to think that they get the best of
everything. There are Americans who _do_ get the best of everything,
but this is because they know what is best and are able and willing to
pay for it. But where hoi polloi thinks that it gets the best of
everything it is mistaken. Take champagne, for instance. "A large
bottle on the ice" is a common order in New York. To the waiter it
means a bottle of champagne. He may or may not ask if any particular
brand is required: that depends upon the quality of the hostelry in
which he is employed; also upon the quality of the customer. The
"large bottle" is forthcoming. It contains a label on which is printed
the maker's name.
The cork which comes out of the bottle is, generally, much larger
than the neck into which it has been forced. It is seldom that one
hears a buyer ask to see the cork. The average buyer of champagne
would not understand the cork's story. He is accustomed to large and
bulging corks and if he were to see an attenuated specimen, of dark
complexion and as hard as a piece of vulcanized rubber he would look
at it with great suspicion and, doubtless, refuse the wine. But an
experienced waiter will know his man and will bring him the sort of
"large bottle" to which he has been accustomed, though it will not be
champagne that a wine drinker would care to swallow. Champagne of the
"large bottle" variety is drunk to a larger extent in the United
States than anywhere else; in fact one would not be far wrong in
saying that it is manufactured for the American market. Generally, the
best champagne is made for England and Russia. The people of those
countries who drink champagne have made at least a cursory study of it
and are able, at a moment's notice, to name the best vintages of the
last twenty-five or thirty years. There are Americans who can do this,
too, but they are not of the "large bottle" or "cold bottle" variety.
The latter are the people who account for the fact that much more
"champagne" is consumed than is furnished by the vineyards of France.